Hope those of you in the States had a happy Turkey Day!
FWIW, Scott, I keep my Bolbitis in what would be considered low to
medium-low light. Even in harder water this is so, tho I agree that it does
better in better light. :-) For the past few years, the Bolbitis in the
fishroom tanks has had to make do with just the light from the room, as in
the fishroom I do not have any fixtures directly over the tanks. Just have a
few shoplights up at the ceiling. I have been surprised that it has grown at
all, but in some tanks, tho it stays short, it has done surprisingly well.
Again, many of these are tanks into which I throw crushed coral to keep pH
in the low to mid 7s. Very few are truely soft/acidic Apisto water.
Julie <'><
>From: Scott Davis <unclescott at prodigy.net>
>Reply-To: r_m_l at yahoogroups.com
>To: r_m_l at yahoogroups.com
>Subject: RE: [RML] Bollbitis
>Date: Mon, 21 Nov 2005 19:34:14 -0800 (PST)
>
>Julie wrote: That's funny. I kept it quite
>successfully in AZ "liquid rock" tapwater. It did
>really well for me there, too.
>
>I'm guessing that one of the variables with water
>ferns and probably any plants, is how much light they
>are getting. And how long they are getting it.
>
>In our village, the municipality does all of us a
>favor by taking out the sulfer in the water (leaving
>the memorable rotton egg smell) and the iron which
>stained shirts and laundry. Their village sized
>version of a basement water softener exchanges a
>significant quantity of sodium for some of the calcium
>and magnesium in the water. Some feel that is a favor.
>
>I just couldn't grow water sprite in the tap water. A
>friend down the street, with more light intensity and
>a much longer light day, indeed sometimes 24/7, grew
>magnificent water sprite.
>
>I'm not explaining it properly, I'm sure, but it seems
>that his better lit plants were able to generate the
>energy to overcome the (osmotic?) problems caused by
>the sodium and fairly hard water. That probably
>explains why I'm now more serious about cutting the
>tap water with R.O. water or even rebuilding the R.O.
>water and slipping more, and more effective, over head
>lights into the fishroom (and dropped them closer to
>the tanks). Still not growing great water sprite
>except in a lucky corner, but the low light "Killie
>plants", such as Java moss, Java fern and some
>Cryptocoryns, which minimally may only need 1/2 to 1/4
>the light intensity of the water sprite, are certainly
>doing better.
>
>All the best!
>Scott